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So I'm reading this book, An Immense World by Ed Yong (Random House, 2022), about animal senses, some of which are very different from our own. (But what kind of book about animals says virtually nothing about cats?) And this chapter concerns the sense of temperature, and this section is discussing animals which live under extreme temperatures.

When scientists study these so-called extremophiles, they tend to focus on adaptations like heat-reflecting hairs in their bodies or self-made antifreeze in their blood. But such adaptations would be useless if an animal's sensory system were constantly screaming it it, triggering feelings of pain. If you want to live in the Sahara, or at the bottom of the ocean, or on a glacier, you'd better tweak your sense to like it.
This concept is intuitive, and yet when we watch extremophiles, from emperor penguins braving the Antarctic chill to camels trekking over scorching sands, it's easy to think that they are suffering throughout their lives. We admire them not just for their physiological resilience but also for their psychological fortitude. We project our senses onto theirs and assume that they'd be in discomfort because we'd be in discomfort. But their sense are tuned to the temperatures in which they live. A camel likely isn't distressed by the baking sun, and penguins probably don't mind huddling through an Antarctic storm. Let the storm rage on. The cold doesn't bother them anyway.

I hope I don't have to ...

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babylon 5 script books

I am rapidly concluding that the B5 books are CURSED

I don't think I posted about this at the time, but there was an absolute odyssey involved in getting the original batch of B5 script books that I ordered.

The original process was this:

I'd known about the existence of the B5 script books vaguely for a while, but hadn't really thought of buying them before. In October, when I came back from traveling, I googled it and found a massive site called "B5 Books" that had authorized editions of all the B5-related books available, which was a lot of them, not just the script books but tons of other stuff as well.

They had closed yesterday.

But wait! They were staying open through the weekend (like 2 more days) because they'd had technical issues. So I splurged and ordered an absolute ton of books (about 2/3 of the total script books out there, mainly focused on episodes I especially wanted to read about). I would have preferred to order just one to find out a) what the books were like, and b) what their customer service was like, but ... closing in 2 days! So I gave them my credit card info for a quantity of books that I don't want to think too closely about.

A month went by.

I got a shipping notice and a tracking number, and and then a box arrived .... with 2 books in it.

I contacted customer service (a bit nervously, in the hopes they'd still actually answer). To their credit, they were very quick to respond; evidently there was a second tracking email I hadn't received for some reason, for the box with most of the rest of the books in it. (They sent me a free digital book to make up for the emotional distress, too - they were really nice.)

This was back in December, and I was leaving on the 13th, Saturday, so I periodically checked the tracking info for the box. It showed up in Fairbanks over the previous weekend, and showed that it was supposed to deliver on Monday.

Monday came and went. About mid-week, the tracking info showed that it had traveled out of Fairbanks again. (Why??) I had visions of the box going all the way back to the sender for some reason. Meanwhile, I had planned to spend the last couple of days before I left diving into my new books, but as the week ticked down and it continued to tease me ... I guess not. Finally, on Friday, I got an actual "out for delivery" notice, and then a notice that a "pick up at post office" slip had been left. Also, Friday was our last day of actual mail delivery (we'd put a hold on it until after Christmas that started on Saturday and went for 2 weeks, i.e. about the amount of time that the post office will hold a box - you know, this box with $100s of books in it). I was headed to the airport Saturday afternoon, but I figured it should be possible to stop by the post office on the way.

I picked up the mail.

No slip.

I thought, okay, maybe I picked up an early batch (yesterday's? our mailbox is on the highway and both the mail delivery and our collection of it is kind of haphazard) so when Orion got home a few hours later, I asked if there had been a slip in the mailbox.

Nope!

So now my package is on hold at the post office, I GUESS, with no ability to redeliver and our mail delivery not starting until after the approximate return to sender date. We hunted all around the mailbox just in case it had been dropped. No slip.

I ended up printing out the tracking number and taking that to the post office on our way to the airport, and that DID work and they DID have the box and I got it, YAY. (Orion said that the slip spontaneously showed up in the mailbox when he was headed home after dropping me off, so WHO KNOWS what was up with that.)

Anyway, all of that ended up working out in the end, and I enjoyed the books so much that I went on Amazon to see if I could find used copies of the ones I didn't have. I ordered a few more, and I just checked the shipping info and discovered that one of them - from a 3rd party Amazon seller - was sent via Fedex and supposedly delivered on Thursday afternoon, i.e. 2 days ago.

Guess what I don't seem to have!

Orion says that Fedex often leaves deliveries in random places around the yard - he's found them on piles of construction supplies, left at the door of the shop instead of the house, etc. Inauspiciously, it snowed a few inches last night, so everything is covered with fresh snow. Also, it was dark. Still, we took flashlights and went and hunted high and low in all the places that a package might be, ranging from likely (covered with snow beside the door) to unlikely but possible (at the doors of the various outbuildings like the greenhouse, on top of random vehicles in the yard) to the highly unlikely (at our road sign, in our mailbox). Not a single sign of it! I don't know if it was delivered to some other house, mistakenly marked as delivered when it's actually fallen under the delivery truck seat, or if a very soggy B5 book is going to turn up four months later when the snow melts, but seriously, WHAT EVEN. I've never had a book go missing like this in all the time I've been ordering used books off Amazon!

Anyway, further updates from the B5 script books are coming soon, and maybe I'll have this particular book eventually, or maybe not.

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Snowflake Challenge Day 4

Snowflake Challenge: A warmly light quaint street of shops at night with heavy snow falling.

RL got a little nuts, but I'm determined not to let this fall by the wayside, so have a belated Day 4 post.

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

The instructions for this one confused me, and I don't really do social media, so instead, I thought it would be fun to link some of my favourite fic/art exchanges!

Despite my sometimes Cursed Exchange Luck, I really do love taking part in exchanges. They've gotten me some of my favourite fics ever, and pushed me to write things I never would have otherwise. Here's a list of all the exchanges I'm taking part in this year:

fffx

The Five Figure Fanwork Exchange! You get five months to write either 2 5k or 1 10k fic, or equivalent art. (Has the five month period ever stopped me from leaving it until the last minute? Nope. But we live dangerously 'round these parts.)

ficinabox

Possibly my favourite exchange ever. You commit to writing 10k, or doing an equivalent creative activity... but it can be split up into a mind-boggling variety of mediums, from AITA posts to CYOA games to literal knitted things. One year I'm going to lose my mind enough, recipient willing, to write 10k entirely in drabbles.

highadrenalineexchange

The converse of FFFX - you get two weeks to write 10k. I was somehow insane enough to do Pride and Prejudice fic my first go-around with HAX, and the two-week deadline was the only reason I managed to get out of my own head enough to do it, lol.

worldbuilding_exchange

I utterly adore worldbuilding, so it's no surprise that an exchange based on it is my catnip. If the exchange somehow allowed me to nominate JUST the first four Harry Potter books, I'd be in heaven, lol.

rule_63

Genderbends are another of my very favourite things, and the main fandoms I'm in - HP, Avengers, Superbat, Numb3rs, and Star Trek - have amazing potential when it comes to male-to-female genderbends. Plus, honestly, girls are just more interesting, lol.

idproquo

I am a firm believer in, and defender of, idfic. I also live in the AU where Marvel made no movies after the Avengers and Harry Potter is an unfinished four-book series with no movies, lol.

This year, I also want to take part in

seasonsofdrabbles ,

everywoman , if it's running, and

halfamoon . We'll see how things go.

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Seasons of Drabbles - Winter Round: Signups and Nominations Open!

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

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Never underestimate the power of spite, y'all.

So one of my friends has been bugging me to read Casey McQuiston's Red, White, and Royal Blue for years.

I resisted, partly because it felt a little too close to RPF for me to feel comfortable (I know posh British men have like five acceptable names but still) and partly because... well, I'm not a fan of the British monarchy, even a fictional version, for very obvious child-of-colonialism reasons.

And then this morning my buddy complained, once again, about the idiot sheltered Tamil Brahmin boy in the RWRB discord's latest terrible take, which was that India does not have racism. (As someone who remembers seeing a front-page ad in the newspaper of record offering a free whitening cream with purchase of soap that had the tagline 'We're sending some compliments your way', AHAHAHAHA.)

So I made a half-joking comment about that I should finally read RWRB so I could join the discord and back her up next time the idiot idioted. And lo and behold, I had a free afternoon and an available copy of the book, so... why the hell not?

And y'all, I feel like such a damn idiot. Because this book, once I let go of my grudge about the names? Was actually really good. The writing is top-notch, the characters are complex while still being fun, and the story balances escapism and realism really well, especially when it comes to the depiction of the monarchy. It's even making me want to see the movie, which is not a thing I say often.

So yeah. Five out of five stars to Casey McQuiston's Red White and Royal Blue, and a reminder to not judge books by their covers, lol.

Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: Svengoolie

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The weird of the day

So I mentioned the power was out sometime over the holiday and my freezer was full of frost. It must have been out longer than I thought because poking around I saw all the ice cream had melted everywhere but that's not the weird part.

No, apparently it was off so long that whatever blockage between the freezer and fridge melted (in spite of me having the fridge off all day once already) because the fridge is ICE cold (I had it on the highest setting just to get it to be slightly cool) I'm like what? What?!? How did you come back to life? It's still a mess but I'm going to let it limp along for now.

I found a manager special half off tray of devil's eggs (24 of them). I have never seen this before. NO ONE has seen this because all the cashiers and baggers were running over to see it. I wonder if this had been a special order that wasn't picked up. Either of way I'm gonna eat them all up.

I was halfway through making the new homework for the first week of the class but suddenly 50 questions into 90 of them (I pick and choose from the 90s to make the homework) the power fails. No reason. No high winds, no big storm. Just boom no power. Lose everything.

And I had just got the phone system working but then bang, the power goes out and the phone with it. Naturally the cell phone says 'no cellular connections.' ARGH

At least I got writing done but when the power went out at least I had handwritten back up for what hadn't autosaved

As horrible as the last week has been for America and the world in general I find myself in an awkward position of arranging the work conference and planning a vacation in spite of being afraid to literally go anywhere even within my own state let alone elsewhere. I can't be alone in this terrible feeling.

Have some links for Science Saturday

Lupus Linked To Virus That Over 95 Percent Of Us Carry – And Now We Finally Know How I remember in medical school when we were really starting to see EBV and thought it caused 'chronic fatigue syndrome' but weren't sure it did anything at all (and weren't sure chronic fatigue was real), now we know it causes multiple cancers and now this

Leonardo da Vinci's DNA may be embedded in his art — and scientists think they've managed to extract some speaking of weird

Rare 2,000-year-old war trumpet, possibly linked to Celtic queen Boudica, discovered in England lots of assumptions here but the trumpet itself is cool

Study Raises Serious Questions About The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Potential Anti-Cancer Fungal Compound Finally Synthesized After 55 Years

Unique 'Golden Shark' Caught Off Central America Diagnosed With Rare Condition

Silencing Bacterial 'Chatter' in Your Mouth May Help Prevent Tooth Decay Another one for my student

And here's the Fannish 50 Friday (one day late) Fic round up

Paint Me Golden Hazbin Hotel

Flight Time 9-1-1

Banded Dress and Black Coat Wheel of Time

make what you believe 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù

listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness Helluva Boss

Alastor's Lament Hazbin Hotel

Settling Into Beacon Hills Teen Wolf

Feeding Time Stargate Atlantis

Caught Flat-Footed Torchwood

Wants and Fears FAKE

Cultural Exchange Stargate Atlantis

The Duel Torchwood

Favorite for a Reason Stargate Atlantis

Shark Dicks NSFW comic Hazbin Hotel

One Drink Lasts Too Long Hazbin Hotel

Fair Food Stargate Atlantis

In Which, We Are Chaos 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia

Adjacent Hazbin Hotel

Blizzard Conditions Torchwood

The New Wave. Hazbin Hotel

Fat And Thin Hazbin Hotel

Jin's Dad Jokes 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

Plotting Revenge The Professionals (TV 1977)

Chip On My Shoulder UglyDolls (2019)

in the nest box Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena

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tv: skymed

SkyMed icons

The below icons are for

tvmovie20in20 Round 22 with SkyMed (all three seasons).

Preview:

At 20,000 feet, the stakes can't get any higher.....

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Daily Happiness

1. As usual, the dry, windy weather is bringing warmer temps, but thankfully it's not getting super hot. High 70s, which is not the weather I want in January, but seems like it'll just be a few days. And it's still very chilly at night.

2. We had a nice morning at Disneyland. They've got a bunch of new menu items that started earlier this week and everything we tried was delicious. And we brought home a chocolate caramel apple to have for dessert, which we haven't done in a while.

3. Tuxie's new favorite spot is under the grill.

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the gin palace

I speak machine

Still not King.

Did birthday dinner with the gf. I realized at some point like... maybe a month ago? That I spent the entire past year telling people I was the age I actually am this year. How am I SO BAD at dates that I get my own age wrong for an entire year? I can't even blame senility, I have always been like this.

***

Finally heard back from the permit wrangler. He spoke to the engineer and the answer is no, he will not sign off on the work. This doesn't shock me. He told me the fucking contractor didn't even follow the blueprints that were used to get the permits, so he has no confidence that the foundations were actually built to spec.

So permit wrangler says he's going to go back to the city and try once again to get in touch with the original contractor. I really appreciate his commitment to trying to find a better solution, but at this point I'm kinda resigned that I'm just have to tear up the floor. I just want to get it over with.

***

So in the meantime I'm still here just cleaning and de-cluttering the rest of the house. Got a wild hair up my ass to pull apart the corner of my office where my weight bench sits and was able to vanquish much dust and dried cat-puke.

I still have too much fucking stuff. This would be simpler if I didn't have such a huge aversion to just tossing stuff into landfill. This is partially the environmentalist side of me, and partially because there was a time in my life when a third-hand hotplate might have actually saved my life. So I have trouble throwing out a perfectly functional hotplate when somebody out there might be in the same position I was in 30+ years ago. But you know, figuring how to get rid of this stuff takes time and so... Things leave, but in much smaller boxes than if I just hired a bloody dumpster.

***

The plus side of not being able to do house construction work is that I have have been spending a lot more time on my b-list, which is 1) plants and 2) family tree. The kitchen island is so huge that I have been able to devote an entire half of it to a bunch of pots that I have seeded with herbs. I installed grow lights in the chandelier[1], so it's going to be an experiment.

[1]Hauled my wobbly ass up a ladder. Did not fall off. Victory achieved.

I had the brilliant idea that if I started tossing birdseed on the deck outside my office, I would give Lord Brock something to look at that would distract him from screaming at me for attention while I'm working. This has backfired spectacularly, because now he climbs onto the window-ledge and screams at me to make the birds happen.

***

On the plus side, digging through my family tree has led me to discovering the other out queer person in my family which is pretty cool. (Statistically I figured it was unlikely I was the only one, especially given just how big Irish Catholic families tend to be.)

A question I hadn't anticipated; I keep coming across generations where there are multiple people with the same name but different birth-dates. I'm trying to figure out if they are cases where one source I'm drawing from has the wrong birth year, or if there were families where they re-used names when babies died. Like there is a French branch were they seem to have named half the boys after the father but with different middle names. Was that real? Was that just Anglos fucking up non-English names? (That happened so often with the Irish names, I don't have any problem believing they also did it to the French.) Or am I finding birth records, but not their death records in families where infant mortality was really high?

Also, I have no explanation for how researching my family name led me to an Irish vampire movie, but now I really want to see this film.

Watch on YouTube

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anti-ICE demonstration this afternoon

We went to the Boston anti-ICE demonstration today, one of many throughout the United States. Cattitude and I got there slightly after the nominal starting time, and managed about an hour before the cold got to me. Yes, it was above freezing and not windy, but standing still on a large open plaza is chillier than moving around. Adrian came to the demo with some of her comrades from Havurat Shalom, and arrived before we did. The crowd was large enough that we didn't try to find her until we were all preparing to leave.

It was a good-sized crowd, but the acoustics and sound system were abysmal; I could only make out a few scraps of what the speakers were saying.

I wore a winter coat, wool socks, and light-weight long underwear, which was too warm while we were on the trolley.

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Fic: One Two THREE Force Born?!

AO3 Link | One Two THREE Force Born?! (1609 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu, Sheev Palpatine | Emperor Palpatine | Darth Sidious
Additional Tags: Crack Treated Seriously, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kriffing Sith Plans
Summary:

It's Padmé with the nightmares, and a plan to head it all off.

One Two THREE Force Born?!

Padmé Amidala was a woman on a mission. Anakin might be completely in a panic over the pregnancy but she was going to head this off. It was just too convenient that she was now being plagued with dreams of her own death, the very night after an unavoidable dinner with the man she had a growing distaste for.

And, deep where she would never tell her husband, she had a nasty suspicion he was trying to shove Anakin off a cliff of irredeemable violence. The Chancellor might not have commented on her state, but his eyes were not as easily fooled by their shared heritage of concealing fashion.

Today, she was going to go enlist the aid of the Jedi, while Anakin was tied up being the poster boy of the GAR. She had all of her diplomatic shields in place, and had the perfect cover story to do this with.

After all, with Jedi having lost so many, surely the Force would be interested in adding a few more children to the future.

Vokara Che was every bit as imposing in her domain as Anakin had said. However, her status as a long time ally had convinced Master Fisto to bring her down to the Healer's Wing. She had pleaded with him, and the healer, that there could not be a father, not when she was a mature woman who knew how to guard against such!

"You were correct that the pregnancy is heavily Force-influenced," Vokara said after several minutes of making Padmé wonder if the healer was going to break her constructed version of events. "You are carrying two very healthy, very Force-active fetuses."

Two. TWO?!

She was not going to faint like the damsel of a holo-drama. "Thank you, Master Che. Given my precarious positioning within the advocates for peace, and past attempts, I could not, in all honesty, acquire medical aid in the typical fashion. Given how my dreams are affected, and having such strange hunches of late, I turned to your Temple in hope."

"A wise choice." For a long moment, Vokara held her eyes, and Padmé knew that the healer was not actually buying the spontaneous pregnancy. A twitch of the lekku, however, indicated the secret was safe. "These hunches, I believe that Master Windu should possibly help sort them out with you."

Oh. Well, that might be the right way to go as well.

Kit, even before the appointment in medical had ended, had gone to find his age-mate. He did so in one of the botanical rooms. "Master Windu," he began. "And Master Yoda," he added to be polite, despite the ancient peering at one of the plants intently.

"Hmm," came over top of Mace's cautious "Master Fisto", and Kit grinned a little that his creche-mate had already detected the mild mischief Kit was feeling.

They all needed a little bit of amusement.

"Senator Amidala has come, and is being tended to by Master Che," Kit began, and both men looked sharply at him. "I do wonder about that old prophecy that was discussed when Master Jinn found a boy on a desert world with no father… as she is here to see about a Force-induced pregnancy as well."

Yoda's ears went flat, Mace's eyes narrowed, and Kit merely smiled.

Mace looked at the woman who had been a solid ally, and the subject of not a small part of gossip. He did not, for a moment, believe the story of no father, but in her political setting, it was for the best to go along with it.

"Master Che said you have been plagued by hunches of late, ones that play out true."

He set a mild tisane in front of her, and took a second one for himself.

"I think the Force has concerns about the path we are on, despite recent developments. After all, if the Count has been neutralized, and Master Kenobi is on the trail of their general… who will keep the momentum up to line pockets with war money, and build such sizable powers through war-time legislation?" Amidala asked, meeting the man's eyes squarely. "I am all but certain you and your peers have had the same intuitions."

Was she — had she —

Maybe Skywalker had been more circumspect than Mace had believed. For all that Amidala was firmly an adherent of a peaceful resolution, her physical and vocal cues were running in tandem with the Council's own suspicions.

"Perhaps we are looking in that same direction," he said.

"If the other Sith, the one Dooku spoke of on our side, is out there, I am certain he would try to harm those touched so firmly by the Light Side as ones fathered by the Force," Amidala told him. "I shudder to think of what such a being might have done had they had access to your Knight Skywalker for all the years of this phantom menace over us."

That, Mace decided, was both accusation and… an invitation to look more closely at how the cards were laid out.

And he had to admit she had a point.

"Anakin!"

"Chancellor."

"I do hope the scandal hasn't harmed your friendship with the Senator."

"What scandal?"

The exchange, handled in the hearing of several itinerant reporters, brought their elder statesman up short, until someone added the right question.

"That she's pregnant with no father in sight," the reporter with blood money in his pockets called out.

"You really think Senator Amidala would stoop to such petty, low-brow nonsense?" Anakin asked them, in his best 'are you kidding me' voice, and he caught the frown on his old 'friend'. He was so glad Saesse Tiin had been able and willing to explore the past several years in his head. "She's having children as the will of the Force, and we Jedi take that kind of thing very seriously."

He then kept walking, leaving the Chancellor stewing, the reporters trying to digest how to spin this, and a feeling that he could not have handled it that way without the Council all suddenly intent on supporting him. He didn't know what had changed there, but he couldn't wait to tell Obi-Wan all about it.

And the Force Twins, because he had to admit, he really hadn't had a lot of time, and they both used precautions.

Chancellor Sheev Palpatine was in a fury. He had primed the well perfectly, and somehow… somehow every insinuation and control he'd put in place had been cut off in the Chosen One. All because of some insane story concocted by the woman that had long since outlived her usefulness.

Any day now, that wretched Kenobi would be returning, and Sheev would have to find a different way to acquire everything he wanted… unless he acted now? He went to his desk to find the comm unit. He needed to provoke the right circumstance, to make it clear he was saving them from the Jedi, but what would it take?

The comm lit up in his hand.

What?

With the Force, he flipped the hood of his cape up, securing it to conceal his features, and turned it on.

"What do you know, that frequency is picked up, Commander," came the very annoying, should-be-dead voice of the Togruta menace. He hastily turned it off, throwing it into the back of the locked drawers.

The knocking at the door that came next, including a call of 'Coruscant Security' sent chills down his back.

He wondered idly if his own Master had felt this the night Sheev had gleefully murdered him.

Mace pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked over at the newest Master of the Council who was pretending he didn't want to hurry out and see a certain Senator. He then looked at Kenobi, who was waiting to be briefed on how and why the Chancellor had been killed in the midst of being served with detention papers.

"A tip from an ally told us to double check Skywalker for undue influence," Kit said, looking entirely too merry in the telling.

"Padmé," Anakin offered cheerfully. "She's having Force twins."

Mace did not groan. It really did sound like Skywalker believed that.

"Removing that," Saesee said, "let us more clearly see the shape of a possible end game, orchestrated to cast us all as traitors."

"Meanwhile, Skywalker's commander had been working on another angle of the endgame," Agen said.

"Leading him and Tano to turning up a plan to make the man expose himself, using the very tools meant to kill us all," Kit said, "by triggering a comm device he should not have had while we were keeping him very securely under comm surveillance with Naboo's and CorSec's cooperation."

"How did you get CorSec to agree to such?" Kenobi asked.

"Amidala implied that she had noticed a malevolent presence while dining with the man, and could they please keep it under wraps that there could be such a threat near the center of government?" Shaak Ti said, eyes dancing with mirth.

"A very tidy end, I suppose." Kenobi then looked at Mace with a deadpan face. "So, how are those prophecies handling the idea of three Force-fathered children?"

Mace did not, as he wanted to, flip the man's hood over his head with the Force.

Padmé smiled, despite fatigue, as she held her daughter, and Anakin held her son. Eventually, they might admit the farce.

Then again, listening to Anakin telling Luke all about the wonders of what the Force could do…

… maybe it was better to leave it at this. What really mattered was that they were all saved from the Sith.

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weekly update

Me-and-media update

Previous poll review
In the Comfort food poll, 55.6% of respondents said their preferred comfort food is chocolate, and 46.7% said savoury carbs. In ticky-boxes, 'juicy intricate poetry words' and 'pushing on through' came second equal (40% each) to hugs (80%). Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
I listened to half an m/m romance audiobook that I selected for one of its readers (Will Watt), but the overuse of "fucking" as an intensifier (and in particular, the repeated phrase, "he was so fucking hot") kept making me roll my eyes. It might be a faithful reproduction of the inner monologue of a first-year uni student, but I don't read romances for verisimilitude. So I switched to The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, read by Carrie Hope Fletcher and Kwaku Fortune, seen mentioned on my flist. I'm halfway through and enjoying it immensely. ETA:

Warnings.

Contains past emotionally abusive relationship, stalking, and PTSD.

A little more Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in hardcopy. Nothing in ebook.

Kdramas
Andrew and I have nearly finished The Guest. I want to ship the OT3, but I don't really care about the priest. (Sorry, priest guy! Alas, you are not my type.) Still, it is a great (gory/horror-y) show, and I've conveniently forgotten some of the developments. We just have one episode to go.

A bit more of While You Were Sleeping, a few episodes of Cashero (I'm not sure I'm in the mood for established relationship, but otoh, Junho! ♥), and a marathon-running BL called Mr. Heart, which was sweet but extremely slight.

Where is the next Love Scout/Family by Choice/whatever??

Other TV
Finished Stranger Things, which got so complex that I lazily stopped following the logic and just watched it as a collection of scenes. But I enjoyed those well enough. So glad they got their victory lap.

Three episodes of Heated Rivalry.

Minor spoilers; tl;dr not my thing.

Wow, I'd heard it was fanficcy, but I wasn't prepared for the total absence of anything resembling an external plot. Like, not even a figleaf. Not even a hockey arc. How??

Anyway, my prediction that it's probably not for me has proven correct. Like, I can tell that the show is made of crack (in the addictive sense), but I'm not into super-buff dudes, and I didn't like the 'fucking but feeling kind of miserable about it' vibe I was getting from Hollander. He deserves better.

But I kept going for episode 3, and I'm really glad I did. There was the ~~coffee~~ smoothie shop not-AU and ♥Kip♥ and his friends and family. And Scott, who fell for Kip in 2.3 seconds like a parched man stumbling into an oasis and, okay, is messed up, but at least self-aware and ~able to communicate~ and ~say nice things~! They were such a breath of fresh air! All the "smoothies" for both of them!

So that (predictably) is me. And I'm actually kind of relieved, because while the show is compelling and well-acted, it's not what I want in a fandom, and anyway, I'm hardly even managing to keep up with my quiet corner of Guardian fandom atm.

I may watch the last three episodes at some point, idk. Wishing those of you who're into it all the very best with your new addiction!!

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, Letters from an American, more of Our Opinions Are Correct (Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz's podcast) including the Murderbot episode, Tech Won't Save Us, the starts of a few other things.

Writing/making things
I've been practising drawing, and picking up art supplies in bits and pieces. The moldable eraser is magic.

Have a couple of sketches.

Pencil sketch/outline on a grid of Zhao Yunlan sprawling on an invisible barstool.

(Imperfect, but I think it's identifiable, which is not nothing. I darkened the linework a little in Paint.NET.)

For my future reference, this all started because I wanted to draw Bingo from Bluey!, which led me down a Youtube Art Videos For Kids rabbit hole. Then I bought new colour pencils and was noodling around with them, and people said nice things about some of my doodles... :-)

Art Youtube For Adults is also really lovely, btw -- full of super-talented people being encouraging and helpful.

I've written a treat for

fandomtrees, but I need to make some edits, and I have no attention span. Chances of my finishing it are about 90%, and chances of any further treats are more like 30% at this stage. Maybe one day I'll be able to make art gifts...

Life/health/mental state things
My arms are gradually improving, but I'm anxious about them. Andrew's having an operation this Thursday; I'll need to be able to bike and drive and cook and so on, and I'm still sore half the time. So I've started swimming again. (I stopped partly because I was avoiding public spaces where I couldn't mask, and partly because my long post-lockdown hair stays damp all day. But the outdoor pool is open for the summer, so I'm going for it.)

I just bought a small $2 desk at a junk shop so that I have a workspace to retreat to downstairs while Andrew's recuperating on the couch in the living room. I'll see how that goes.

I have a hand-me-down mini air fryer from my parents which I still haven't taken out for a spin. Quick/easy meal suggestions very welcome, especially if they're things I can throw together late at night, post hospital visits. (NB: I don't do onions or brassicas.)

Good things
Andrew, swimming, drawing, Kdramas, Guardian, Zhao Yunlaaaan, modern medicine. Cat:

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

Poll #34068 Om

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 48

View Respondents

Do you meditate?

View Answers

yes, regularly
4 (8.3%)

yes, from time to time
10 (20.8%)

I used to
6 (12.5%)

I used to occasionally
4 (8.3%)

what you mean by 'meditate'?
7 (14.6%)

no
20 (41.7%)

other
3 (6.2%)

ticky-box of being squeamish about fingernail clippings
2 (4.2%)

ticky-box full of hockey show squee
6 (12.5%)

ticky-box full of feeling kind of zonky
19 (39.6%)

ticky-box full of skipping across treetops and dancing through the clouds
22 (45.8%)

ticky-box full of hugs
37 (77.1%)

Entry tags:

reading notes

2025 reading wrap up

hopefully this storygraph link goes to the public option, not the for me specifically option.

I'm choosing to not look at what was planned; I've already posted about my 5 star reads and some other thinking. This is me just reading through and having feelings.

The first (We Were Dreamers, Simu Liu, biography) and last (The House That Horror Built, Christina Henry, horror) sure are an interesting juxtaposition
The 'mood' graph seems weird and I wish it wasn't there
Going back to study had a noticeable effect on how much I was reading, which is not a surprise
I hate the way that storygraph does 'genre' because my top five are fantasy, science fiction, short stories, LGBTQIA+, and horror, only three of which I consider to be genres.
15 days per book as an average just shows how much my reading is an overlapping thing.
'top authors' - Katherine MacLean was 4 (that can't be right, there were 8 short stories, I must not have tracked them all), Premee Mohammed (3 stories, hmm, something odd there as well), and Dave Warner (3 books, that's a trilogy)
average rating 3.75 - probably because the DNF/0 don't get counted; I gave 11 2 star ratings, which seems more than I would have expected. Most frequent rating of 4 is also higher than I would have expected.
somehow there were 52 'new to me' authors, which is interesting because I felt like I was sticking to comfortable stuff.
DNF - 22 books; not sure if that feels high
read 24 of my books - I bet that this is an undercount, because I don't always mark books as owned, particularly if I only have them as ebook.
it is weird that my highest rated reads tend to be non-fiction, because I read so little of it

I clicked through to the more detail

most commonly applied tag is 'borrowed', applied to 21 books. 21 borrowed + 24 owned =/= the number read
I need to update the tags on some, because they don't have the -read suffix added

Random Sports Stuff

Yes, from me.

IDK if you can see

CBCSports in other countries, but they're currently playing my preferred type of figure skating (the recent nationals), which consists of:

Individual single short programs (long programs are usually too long for me to want to watch a single dance routine, and I also don't want to watch hours and hours of the stuff).

Of just the top competators (so I don't have to feel bad when they fall down or do poorly, also see above about attention span).

With the music directly onto the broadcast (rather than echoey rink music).

Without commentary, except maybe a few notes before the dance starts (because I neither know nor care what a triple toe loop or whatever is, and equally do not care if the skater did a double instead.)

Anyway, youtube has figured this out and is giving me random Canadian children gliding around the ice.

(Randomly my only sports icon relates to cricket.)

Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: nothing now

Acquisitions.

One of my favorite things about the local library's used book sales is that every so often, a "for your consideration" awards screener pops up in the DVD section. It speaks to the neighborhood having someone who gets them to begin with, and it's fun to grab a copy of something like The Queen's Gambit because it's there. So I did, and now I don't have to mess around with any piggybacking on my mom's account or other sites to watch it.

It's too bad FYC discs are something of a thing of the past - it's the only physical release some of these movies and TV shows ever get. I know the idea of owning the media's foreign to the companies because a physical sale is a single purchase and means you can't keep stringing someone along with a long-term lease. It doesn't mean I can't dislike how a company deciding to remove something makes piracy, or morally dubious used DVD sales, the only way to watch it.

Entry tags:

art: procreate

gratuitous digital art

(selling prints via the local game store)

stylized digital illustration: a fantasy lady, peacock-themed

Digital painting in Procreate, at 11"x17" print.

Entry tags:

admin

Challenge 503: Sock

Our new challenge is:

SOCK

As always, you can interpret the prompt literally or figuratively, in whatever way works for you.

Each work created for this challenge should be posted as a new entry to the comm. Posting starts now and continues up until the challenge ends at 4pm Pacific Time on Tuesday, 20th January. No sign-up required.

Mods will tag your work with fandom and challenge. When you've posted entries to three consecutive challenges, you will earn a name tag, and we'll go back and tag all your previous entries with your name.

All kinds of fanworks in all fandoms are welcome. Please have a look at our guidelines before you play. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact a mod. And if you have any suggestions for future challenges, you can leave them in the comments of this post.

You can view stats for

fan_flashworks entries and search and filter them via the Community Report and Creator Report. See our FAQ post for more details.

Also, keep an eye out for the next

ffw_social post, which will go up in the next couple of days. If you haven't joined the

ffw_social comm, it's never too late to come and check it out. (Posts are locked, which means you have to join to see them.)

Entry tags:

admin

Admin: Challenge closed

The Sand challenge is now closed. Here are the entries:

Stranger Things: Fanfic: Sand by

wearing_tearing
Original: icons: sand by

lilly_c
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Fanfic: In a Grain of Sand by

alexcat
due South: Fanfiction: Sandy Boots by

lucy_roman
Sherlock Holmes (ACD): Fanfic: Beneath the Sand by

smallhobbit
Terraria: Quatrain: A Prize to be Won by

infinitum_noctem
FAKE: Fanfic: Wishful Thinking by

badly_knitted
no fandom: icons: Sand by

highlander_ii
Multifandom (TV): Icons: Life’s a Beach (9 icons) by

veronyxk84
S.W.A.T.: Fan Fiction: Looking Forward To Most by

darkjediqueen
US Politics: poetry: the sand in the gears by

teaotter
Torchwood: Fanfic: Newsworthy by

m_findlow
Heated Rivalry: Fanfic: Sweaty, Salty, Sandy by

seeyouontheice
子非鱼 (Zi Fei Yu): Fanfic: the same soul (make the ocean wider) by

bluedreaming

Also, congratulations to those who earned badges and name tags this round:

teaotter earned The Unstoppable (SILVER) (36 challenge streak).

\o/ \o/ \o/

Thank you to everyone who participated! You're now free to post your entries to your journal or wherever else you'd like. If you're archiving on AO3, you can add your work to our fan_flashworks collection there.

The Community Report and Creator Report will be updated shortly with the entries from this round. See our FAQ for more details.

Next challenge coming right up.

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Yesterday, I was having a conversation with Youngest about (SF) con-running. The topic was international guests, and what the timelines are for inviting them.

I said something flippant about 'well, that timeline would be doable these days, because everyone has email, at least we don't have to write letters'. And there was that moment where I could see Youngest's world view shift in real time, so we talked in a bit more detail about my memories of the first con I was involved in running*. That in 1996, when we were approaching people to be guests, email addresses were not ubiquitous**. That our primary method of contact was letters. And then I talked about the fact that we had to assume a best case scenario of a month turn around on anything we sent.

What I didn't think to say, is that because of that, there is a reasonably high chance that there is a letter from Douglas Adams in the WASFF archive. The reasons there might not be is that it might be from their agent, or it may have been lost when various documents were transferred to the archives.

* I was Treasurer for SwanCon 23 in 1998; that committee then did a quick reshuffle and ran SwanCon 25 in 2000. I started my committee habit early -- I was on the UniSFA (UWA SF club) as Fresher rep ('92), President ('93) and IPP ('94).

**We got into a side discussion about how rare email addresses were in 1992, when I got my first email address, when the uni I studied at decided to do the somewhat radical thing of provide an email address to any student who requested one, regardless of faculty. I'd love to know what the thinking was and whether it was 'this is going to become essential knowledge' or if it was something more.

Entry tags:

aunt celli nights are the best nights

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